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    The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin
    The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin
    The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin
    Ebook149 pages1 hour

    The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin

    By Atria Books

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    About this ebook

    For many book Lovers, there is no more pleasing start to a book than a well-chosen epigraph. These intriguing quotations, sayings, and snippets of songs and poems do more than set the tone for the experience ahead: the epigraph informs us about the author’s sensibility. Are we in the hands of a literalist or a wit? A cynic or a romantic? A writer of great ambition or a miniaturist? The epigraph hints at hidden stories and frequently comes with one of its own.

    The Art of the Epigraph collects more than 250 examples from across five hundred years of literature and offers insights into their meaning and purpose, including what induces so many writers to cede the very first words a reader will encounter in their book to another writer. With memorable quotations ranging from Dr. Johnson to Dr. Seuss, Herodotus to Hemingway, Jane Austen to Karl Marx, and A. A. Milne to Marcel Proust, here is a book that allows us a glimpse of the great writer as devoted reader. This lively and distinctive literary companion traces not only the art of the epigraph but the history of the book.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateOct 30, 2012
    ISBN9781451693270
    The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin

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      Book preview

      The Art of the Epigraph - Atria Books

      title

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTION

      EDITOR’S NOTE

      Life

      Tell the Truth

      Love

      The River of Time

      Human Folly

      Follow Your Bliss

      Courage

      Warnings and Lamentations

      Off the Map

      The Empire of the Mind

      Rebels and Outsiders

      The Generations

      We’re All Mad Here

      An Excellent Thing in a Woman

      Know Thyself

      Paradox

      Wit and Wisdom

      Morality

      A Matter of Perception

      Books and Storytelling

      Bitter Truth

      The Existential Epigraph

      Unexpected Sources

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      ABOUT ROSEMARY AHERN

      INDEXES

      for ML

      For books continue each other in spite of our habit of judging them separately.

      —VIRGINIA WOOLF

      Off I go, rummaging about in books for sayings which please me.

      —MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

      INTRODUCTION

      I’m always surprised when someone claims not to read epigraphs. To me, that’s an offering refused, a pleasure skipped. Those intriguing quotations, sayings, snippets of songs and poems, do more than just set the tone for the experience ahead: the epigraph informs us about the author’s sensibility. Are we in the hands of a literalist or a wit? A cynic or a romantic? A writer of great ambition or a miniaturist? The epigraph hints at hidden stories and frequently comes with one of its own.

      In hunting for epigraphs, I’ve discovered them as far back as the fourteenth century, in The Canterbury Tales, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a more serious scholar traced the tradition back even further. The cumbersome (occasionally amusing) prefaces found in early novels like Don Quixote (1605) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) can be considered the literary forebears of the crisp, succinct epigrams that became the fashion in the twentieth century. Glamorous modernists like Hemingway and Fitzgerald popularized epigraphs, challenging authors to appear as learned and clever in their use of them ever since.

      Some of my favorite authors are purists who present their work without outside association or adornment, without a wink or a clue. Flaubert, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Patti Smith. I respect and admire their silence before their books begin. However, this book celebrates the generosity of authors willing to part the curtain and show us a glimpse of their mental furniture; to give us a preview of what they think is vital, funny, and true. George Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, C. S. Lewis, Lorrie Moore. Of course, their books would be every bit as memorable and important without epigraphs appended, but wouldn’t we miss that extra element of anticipation? It would be like going to see Vertigo or Midnight in Paris and not taking your seat until after the opening title sequence. I always want to see how mood is established—and to submit.

      Epigraphs appeal to those of us who occasionally need the kind of bolstering an ingenious turn of phrase or inspiring piece of wisdom can provide. I’m with Dorothy Parker when she says, I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound—if I can remember any of the damn things. Thankfully, memory aides abound in the front matter of many of the world’s best books. All that truth, humor, and novelty of expression presorted for us by consummate artists and cherished friends.

      So yes, The Art of the Epigraph can be enjoyed like any quotation book. Here you will find advice on how to live well, be brave, avoid mistakes, apply the correct etiquette, adjust your expectations, appreciate quirkiness (your own and others’), attract a lover, break out of a rut, and dodge obligations. But you will also encounter fascinating conversations conducted over centuries and across cultures and genres. Writers communing with other writers, sometimes resulting in odd but delightful coincidences, like the fact that Susan Sontag and Mary Higgins Clark both turned to Tennyson when selecting epigraphs for their books. Divisions disappear; ideas and affinities are more clearly revealed.

      Epigraphs remind us that writers are readers. I suppose that is what I like best about them. The experience I have when I read, encountering lines that perfectly express what I believe but can’t articulate, that open up a new point of view, that make me feel understood or filled with joy, as brilliant and lofty as I might consider that book’s author—it happens to them too. And that’s what’s on display in the epigraph: an author acknowledging his or her place in the fellowship of readers.

      EDITOR’S NOTE

      The Oxford English Dictionary defines epigraph as the short quotation or motto placed at the commencement of a book, chapter, etc. In compiling The Art of the Epigraph, I have primarily chosen quotations that open the work in question. However, I have occasionally selected epigraphs from chapters or parts when doing so would allow classics like The Red and the Black, Middlemarch, and The Souls of Black Folk to be represented—or when an interior quote simply proved impossible to resist.

      It should be noted that many authors adorn their opening pages with two, three, even several epigraphs. With a few exceptions, I have selected one quote from the crop. Some authors present their epigraphs unattributed. Where it has been possible to determine the source, I’ve annotated the entry to give that information. A few quotes, however, have managed to elude me. I’ve chosen to include a handful of epigraphs that originally appeared in Latin, French, or Italian without English translation. In The Art of the Epigraph, these quotes appear in their English translations only.

      Translations aside, a conscious choice was made not to standardize spelling, punctuation, styling, and other authorial idiosyncrasies that turn up in epigraphs. Except for variations in line breaks, epigraphs appear exactly as they do in the original editions of the books they were drawn from.

      Finally, the publication dates listed herein represent the date of first publication in book form, be that in America or abroad.

      LIFE

      One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever . . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose . . . The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

      —ECCLESIASTES

      In The Sun Also Rises (1926), Ernest Hemingway

      Taking it slowly fixes everything.

      —ENNIUS

      In The Red and the Black (1830), Stendhal

      One of the many pleasures of reading Stendhal is his liberal use of epigraphs, which offer wry commentary on the chapters they announce. The great translator Burton Raffel warns that Stendhal had a notorious habit of writing the epigraphs himself and ascribing them to elevated or otherwise unlikely sources. We could be skeptical, but why not play along? Hailed as the Homer of Rome, Quintus Ennius (239–169 BC) was born in southern Italy, in what is today Calabria, where Greek was then the language of the upper classes.

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